Congratulations on your decision to purchase a new VxRail Appliance. Please review and verify the items below before the Dell EMC Services Team arrives on site. This will ensure the smoothest possible VxRail deployment.

Physical Site Preparation

Tip: Plan ahead for additional nodes

Physical site

Confirm you have sufficient rack space and two power connections per node. If your data center has special power requirements, order appropriate cords. Provide a way for our services team to connect their laptop to your VxRail—either directly through your top-of- rack switch, or a jumpbox you provide.

Tip: If services will be connecting to your VxRail via an SFP+ or SFP28 switch, make sure a 1Gb RJ-45 to SFP+ /SFP28 adapter is available

Physical network

VxRail nodes can be configured with either SFP+, SFP28, or RJ-45 NIC ports—remember to order transceivers and optical cables for each SFP+ or SFP28 configured node and switch. If you are running 25GbE you need 2 available switch ports per node. If you are running 10 GbE, depending upon your configuration you need either 2 or 4 available switch ports per node. If you are running 1 GbE, each node requires four available switch ports.

In addition to reviewing the points below, share the Network Guide with your networking team prior to the arrival of Dell EMC Implementation Services. Consult our VxRail Network Guide for a detailed review of this subject.

Decide on your ESXi host naming scheme and select a single root password for all ESXi hosts in the VxRail cluster. Reserve ESXi host IP addresses for every node in the cluster. Decide on a hostname and reserve an IP address for VxRail Manager. Determine the IP address of the default gateway and subnet mask. If you’re going to use ESRS (recommended), allocate an IP address and allow outbound communication with esrs. emc.com.

Tip: Make sure to run a forward and reverse nslookup on VxRail Manager, and for each VxRail node

Logging

If you’re planning to use vRealize Log Insight on the VxRail cluster, reserve an IP address and decide on a hostname, and configure forward and reverse DNS entries for both. If you are going to use an existing syslog server, get the hostname or IP address of your third- party syslog server.

Purchase vSphere licenses or apply licenses from an existing VMware ELA. If purchasing, you can add them to your VxRail order, or get them separately from VMware or a partner.

Tip: vSphere Enterprise Plus is recommended for the best VxRail experience

vCenter

Before setting up your new VxRail, determine whether you will use the VxRail vCenter Server or a customer supplied vCenter Server. Consult our vCenter Server Planning Guide for a detailed review of this subject.

vCenter

If you’re using the VxRail vCenter Server, decide on the hostnames for vCenter Server and PSC. Reserve two IP addresses and configure forward and reverse DNS entries for both IP addresses and hostnames.

If you’re using a customer supplied vCenter Server, determine the PSC, hostname, administration user, and data center to which the VxRail cluster will belong. Create a new unique VxRail management user and decide on a unique VxRail cluster name.